The Warm Glow of Distant Turkey

November 26, 2004 | Laughing Knees | 1 Comment 

One of the things I’ve al­ways loved about the Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day in Amer­ica is that more of­ten than not it falls right on or around my birth­day, No­vem­ber 26. Here in Japan it is al­ready the 26^th so I can bathe in all that cross– world cheer go­ing on on the lighter shade of pale end of the globe. All those peo­ple un­wit­tingly cel­e­brat­ing my birth! And go­ing out of their way to bake, broil, roast, boil, sauté, flambé, ro­tis­serie, sim­mer, fry, deep fry, stir fry, chill, freeze, mix, toss, and stuff that groan­ing weight of de­lec­table ta­ble fare, just in honor of my com­ing into the world! How nice of them! Like an of­fer­ing. Or a trib­ute. They even brave the bi­nary storms of air traf­fic con­trol to ratchet across their land­scapes, pulling to­gether for ge­netic ca­ma­raderie, all to thank me for my ex­is­tence. I must say, that though I never asked for it, there is a won­der­ful sense of de­light, know­ing that peo­ple will even go on hol­i­day and pro­claim a na­tional week­end off so that I might have a day to my­self, com­fort­ably en­sconced in a cor­nu­copia of food. Win­ter may be com­ing, but the fat that will build up will last un­til spring: the clos­est form of na­ture wor­ship that I could have hoped for. I feel like the Green Man or Bac­chus. The rev­el­ers danc­ing for plenty and sheer forgetfulness!

Well, I am 44 now. I had promised my­self that by this date I would get my­self into Adonis-​​like shape and go pranc­ing in the hills alone, in search of Di­ana and her stag. Un­for­tu­nately the bud of a belly still rings my Sat­urn and the moun­tain I plan to climb when the light reaches these lon­gi­tudes will ex­tract more grunts and heavy foot­falls than willow-​​like grace. But the heart is danc­ing more than it has been in months, like a lit­tle satyr, and I’ve even taken to singing. I hope the clouds clear enough for me to view the snowy tresses of Mt. Fuji from my fa­vorite se­cret spot to the south; for a day I want to feel small and in­signif­i­cant, just the pin­prick of aware­ness be­hind these eyes lost to the vast seren­ity of Fuji’s great seat. A day for still­ing my ex­is­tence and los­ing my­self in anonymity, cel­e­brat­ing the in­te­gra­tion of my­self with the wind and leaves. The joy of the wind­blown soul.

To all those who cel­e­brate it, I raise my glass and toast to your lives and your hearts, for Thanks­giv­ing… in its orig­i­nal sense. Thank you for your com­pany and thanks for the gift of life. Thanks all around for an­other year. And thanks to the Earth for giv­ing me this mo­ment of sim­ple joy, of be­ing alive on her shores, and for the pas­sage of night and day, to­ward an­other round­ing of the trail along the sides of the mountains.

It is so good to be alive.

When You Fall, Get Right Back Up

November 21, 2004 | Laughing Knees | Leave a Comment 

I slept like the dead these past two days, giv­ing in to my body’s de­mand for re­con­nec­tion to both the ground­ing of cel­lu­lar re­al­ity and the vo­tive heal­ing of dreams. The sun and the stars vaulted over­head twice be­fore my eyes stopped the light and mea­sured time once again. The fever and the cough­ing had re­ceded and my throat felt dry. I got up to get a glass of water.

It was very re­as­sur­ing to read both Pica’s and Nu­me­nius’ re­ac­tions to the sem­i­nar they both at­tended. See­ing peo­ple gather and talk about how to solve the prob­lems en­cour­ages me to keep up hope. Part of the dif­fi­culty for me is that even though I know that there must be sim­i­lar gath­er­ings go­ing on here in Japan, I find them hard to lo­cate be­cause my Japan­ese read­ing is poor, ren­der­ing me prac­ti­cally il­lit­er­ate in a coun­try of peo­ple rated among the most lit­er­ate in the world. At the same time there is lit­tle sense of ur­gency here. Most peo­ple hardly re­fer to any big is­sues when con­vers­ing. A na­tion of peo­ple in com­plete de­nial, even though their prime min­is­ter is send­ing troops to Iraq against the wishes of 90% of the pop­u­lace, the econ­omy has been in a 12-​​year slump, and their pre­cious land­scape is go­ing to ruin, mainly be­cause of gov­ern­ment farm sub­si­dies which ren­der nearly half the farms un­at­tended to, in­dis­crim­i­nate gov­ern­ment spon­sored road con­struc­tion, and com­plete lack of imag­i­na­tion when com­ing up with schemes to re­vive lo­cal economies. Be­cause there is so lit­tle protest go­ing on and grass­roots move­ments are so in­su­lar and are ac­tively dis­cour­aged by the gov­ern­ment and so­cial mores, it is dif­fi­cult to make a stand on any is­sues. While politi­cians yearly in­un­date neigh­bor­hoods with blar­ing elec­tion cam­paigns from loud­speak­ers mounted on vans dri­ving through the lo­cal streets (some­thing I can’t imag­ine an Amer­i­can or Eu­ro­pean town would tol­er­ate), cit­i­zens who protest are openly de­rided on the news as be­ing “too noisy” and “dan­ger­ous”. Even one of my close Japan­ese friends, when I took her to her first anti-​​war demon­stra­tion in 2003, voiced al­most hys­ter­i­cal fear of “the mob” be­fore she ex­pe­ri­enced the peace­ful bond­ing that of­ten oc­curs in such gath­er­ings. All be­cause of a life­long sub­jec­tion to a government-​​favoring ed­u­ca­tion and so­ci­ety, pro­moted en­tirely by a very con­ser­v­a­tive government.

I’ve been trudg­ing through emo­tional mud since the Amer­i­can elec­tion, try­ing to find some re­deem­ing bit of news to give me rea­son to feel I can still trust the hu­man race. It seems as if the world is de­scend­ing into hell, and that we are tee­ter­ing on the edge of the ani­hi­la­tion. It is all bathed in pain and I thrash about in my words like a fish snagged by a hook. I am so an­gry. I am so hurt. I strug­gle with the urge to hate, though I have no idea which face it is that I am sup­posed to hate. The Iraq war, the po­lit­i­cal cli­mate, the threat of nu­clear bombs, the im­pend­ing col­lapse of the sky and oceans, the holo­caust of other liv­ing things, even the dan­ger to the very food and wa­ter we con­sume… How can we main­tain san­ity with such an over­whelm­ing doom-​​sense hang­ing over us?

Hate is sim­ply a knee-​​jerk protest against pain. Surely I have ma­tured enough to draw the pain nigh and en­com­pass it? Surely I can learn from this pain and evolve within the moral land­scape? Surely there must be a way to evoke recog­ni­tion of the fun­da­men­tal com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor of be­ing chil­dren of this planet? Surely it can­not all be de­bat­able, that there ex­ist some uni­ver­sal truths that can­not be denied?

It is so easy to for­get that the TV snatches only a smat­ter­ing of the leaves of re­al­ity flut­ter­ing through the air. And like try­ing to catch snowflakes, you only get a tiny col­lec­tion of in­sights into all that is hap­pen­ing. All you can know is the lit­tle that your senses bring you, and even that is se­lected by cor­ri­dors of concentration.

I glanced up just now at the still­ness of the branches and leaves out­side the win­dow, burn­ing yel­low in the No­vem­ber evening sun­light. Amidst the still­ness scribed a hawk moth, wings blurred and hot, all en­ergy tight and fo­cused on the white camel­lia blos­soms she touched and whirled around. She was like a rest­less scholar with her nose buried in a book, life too short and pre­cious for any­thing else. An orange-​​brown speck in my eye, her feed­ing swept through the mo­ment in an an­gry de­light, ar­riv­ing out of the air for those traces of sugar, then dart­ing off to­wards what­ever ten­drils of taste she fol­lowed, out of sight. There and back again, with nary even a word of greeting.

These four years have eaten away at the roots, both in my per­sonal life and in the life of the com­mons. Some­times I shiver be­fore open­ing the front door. But it is all mo­men­tary and there is noth­ing else. You might start by lov­ing, in­tensely and with all ur­gency, your im­me­di­ate sur­round­ings. Rec­og­nize that they will soon pass and that noth­ing will ever again hold quite this shape or pat­tern. So that when we look up and look fur­ther, it is all con­nected and one, a ma­trix of puls­ing en­ergy and, yes, the glue of love. For what else is life and the world but the con­ge­la­tion of grace?

It is grace that I seek when I scram­ble for hope.

Telling the Hard Story

November 13, 2004 | Laughing Knees | Leave a Comment 

Chris at Creek Run­ning North has writ­ten an ac­count of an ex­pe­ri­ence in his life that will stop you in your tracks. One of the best blog posts I have ever read, cap­tur­ing the heart of why I blog, and seek in the blogs I read, in the first place.

MUSIC TO YOUR EARS

November 13, 2004 | Laughing Knees | Leave a Comment 

For the past three days I have been bop­ping down mem­ory lane, pick­ing up songs here and there through a new per­sonal on­line ra­dio sta­tion ser­vice called Last:FM. Once you reg­is­ter what you do is add al­bums and songs from an on­line li­brary of mu­sic (or from the songs you play on your com­puter or mp3 player) to your per­sonal pro­file, which, once you’ve ac­quired more than a hun­dred tracks will be avail­able to you as an per­sonal on­line ra­dio sta­tion that you can play and lis­ten to. In ad­di­tion, the more songs you play the more you at­tract “neigh­bors” who have mu­sic sim­i­lar to yours, so that your choices con­tinue to grow and new mu­sic pos­si­bil­i­ties open up to you. You can also add a link to your web­site for read­ers to lis­ten to your ra­dio station.

I’ve al­ready au­to­mat­i­cally cat­a­logued thou­sands of songs and the list keeps get­ting re­fined the longer I play the songs I fa­vor. So many songs from my younger days. And songs I had never thought to lis­ten to before.

Check out my per­sonal ra­dio sta­tion home­page.

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